Earnings Persistence and Analysts Coverage

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether analysts’ coverage decisions would be affected by corporate earnings persistence. The persistence of the earnings series provides information concerning the value of private search activity and thus, should be a focus of analyst attention. Our results show that earnings persistence is significantly positively associated with the level of security analyst coverage while the number of analysts following long-term forecasts and the frequency of long-term forecasts are found to be negatively associated with earnings persistence. We posit that there is higher demand for non-public information for firms which have low earnings persistence than for firms which have high earnings persistence. Analysts make relatively optimistic forecasts when earnings are less persistence, suggesting that analysts believe that by issuing optimistic forecasts, they obtain better information from managers. Our results support this hypothesis. We also find that earnings persistence is significantly negatively associated with analysts herding index. n addition, we classify analysts as forecast (recommendation) leaders and followers based on the relative timeliness of their earnings forecasts (recommendation). We investigate whether security analysts exhibit persistence in their timely forecast or timely recommendation. We find that the analysts who have led peers in the past are more likely to lead again. Leading likelihood increases with the analyst’s prior accuracy and leader in the previous period, this relationship is more pronounced for firms with high earnings persistence.